Moi dix Mois
by Reno Spiegel
Summary: He said never to answer the phone...she paid the price for ignoring him.


Author's Note: Yes, the title is a bit of a play on words. Moi dix Mois is a visual-kei band -- very good, at that -- that I'm half-advertising here, but it translates literally to My Ten Months, thus abbreviated to M10M. Anyway...along with the story...  
  
WARNING: This may be rough for people who have seen/been a part of physical or mental abuse, rape, disturbing memories, confinement, etc. You have been warned.  
  
Moi dix Mois  
by Reno Spiegel  
Dante@towernetwork.net  
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She awoke to the sound of a ringing phone, rudely interrupting her short nap. She came to consciousness facing the receiver in a room that smelled of dry blood and rusty nails, and caught the tail-end of the first ring. At the second ring, she glanced around, fearful. She hadn't been allowed to see light in a long while, so long it wasn't even worth counting.  
  
But she did.  
  
"Ten months," she murmured. He'd been overall decent to her, letting her help him in the lab and bringing her dinner, but she hadn't tried going upstairs since the last time, the time she was caught. He had bent her over the table and raped her until he saw fit, then left her as a sniffling mess in the corner.  
  
The third ring made her ask herself if he might be asleep and she could answer it. At the fourth, she assumed he may be out and cautiously lifted the receiver, putting it to her ear. A glance at the Caller ID told her this was a secure line. "...Is it really you?"  
  
There came a sigh of relief. "Lu...thank God it's you...listen, he won't let us get anywhere near the place without shooting at us or something. But listen to me; we think there may be a sedative there that's strong enough to knock him out for a bit and you can get out of the mansion."  
  
Lucrecia's eyes welled with tears. She hadn't seen any light, seeing as how his eyes could see better in dark anyway, he had cut off their lighting, and she just held his equipment, in ten months. Going outside could permanently blind her at this point, but it was a risk worth taking. "Cloud, I can't see anything in here. There's no way for me to read labels or anything."  
  
"You don't have to!" He sounded strained, urgent. "Lu, you must know your way around, right?" She said yes, but she only knew where things were by sound. "It's in a dual-needled syringe, and if he doesn't know what it is, then he probably doesn't know what it can do. He may not have taken it yet -- there may still be hope!"  
  
She was crying now. If he found her... "Oh, Cloud, why are you doing this for me? You've never even seen my face! Why waste your time trying to save me? He always knows where I am; who I'm with. You can't run from a man like him. He's too sharp. And trying to sedate him! It's ludicrous..."  
  
"No!" he yelled. She heard him pacing frantically, probably on dirt. She knew he would never see her face, and if he did it would be far too late to take her away from the man. "Lu, there's always ho --" Click. "...did you hear that?"  
  
She let the phone fall to the base, crying harder. The click had been someone on the line hanging up. She had been so wrapped up the joy of maybe, just maybe, seeing her face after ten months in a mirror that wasn't shattered, that she hadn't heard him pick the phone up. It wouldn't have helped to listen for breathing; he'd been a pearl-diver when Wutai's depression had come about, and he could go for six minutes without coming up for air. The creak of the door down the hallway and up the stairs told her that she and Cloud had been right.  
  
But tonight, he passed her by, this heard by the footsteps, and went to the wall. His robes brusher her arm as he went past, and she could smell his deoderant, a tragic irony when it came to the state of the mansion. She heard a metallic snap and a click, both of the circuit box on the wall, then the room flooding with so much light that she literally saw nothing but white.  
  
"...What can you see?" he asked; softly, friendly. She'd known him for years; he was the best when it came to false identity. He had once been refered to as a man who spun webs so well that even the flies in them took a moment to appreciate their beauty.  
  
She gasped. Even after ten months of darkness, it took maybe thirty seconds for her to see faintly again. She spun on her heel; the lab in the ShinRa Mansion was not a sight she was surprised to see, but the second occupant was. The same hair...the same eyes...the same clothes...  
  
"You're absolutely pathetic. Foolish woman. I'd spit on you, but I'm afraid it would give you something to drink, and God help the man who goes out of his way to help you. I spent thirty years in a coffin without changing; what would two years outside of it do to me?"  
  
She had stopped crying, stock-still. "Vincent..." Her voice was so small compared to his; to him. Her vision was rapidly returning, and she took in everything; his eyes, particularly. In his eyes was madness, plain and simple. A man tortured by another, left now as a simple shell to walk and destroy. "Why..."  
  
He struck her, hard across the cheek. She cried out and fell, but this was a common feeling these days. He bent over her as she cupped the side of her face and bit her lip to keep from sobbing, just at the cruelty of it all. "Do you remember the day you came here, looking to save me from hell?" She did; she had come to do just that, to resurrect the old Vincent Valentine in him and bring him to life again. "You haven't stopped being ignorant since that day. Still you think I'm your friend."  
  
He did spit on her this time. With anyone else, she would smell alcohol or cigarettes, but this was just what had happened to him in two short years. She'd gone to the dark basement to find him, and hadn't been allowed to leave since. She hadn't seen him in thirty-four years; she'd closed her eyes at the waterfall, afraid to love him again.  
  
Vincent stood and started pacing. "I think it's the moon that drove me insane. One night it turned red, and I could see it outside my bedroom window as well as the front window. The next night, four windows. The next night, eight. This continued until sunrise never came about anymore and there was a blood red moon outside each of the windows, just a constant reminder that people looking at me see only that; a horrid version of a once-decent thing."  
  
He spun quickly, his booted foot colliding with her ribcage as she lay listening to him. Had she not been biting her tongue, she would have cried out again, and he would have won. Again, this beating was nothing new. He said to her that he'd told her not to answer the phone before. "Vincent...you once said...what's yours is mine. The phone..."  
  
For once, he smiled, picking up the phone as a whole and ripping the cord from the wall with a giant tug. The Caller ID flickered off and he held up the frayed end of the cord, making it known that her communication privileges had just been revoked. "The phone was installed when Hojo worked here. It's the company's phone, you silly girl."  
  
She gasped. Vincent had always worked with loopholes, she knew that, but this wasn't one she had even thought about. He drew forth his Death Penalty, the weapon still looking as fine as the day he'd gotten it from the waterfall, where she had pretended to hate him. Holding the barrel toward her, he squinted, eyes still confining a madness unfit for this world. "I was listening, you know. I listen to it all. Strife will be here, I'm quite aware, and someday they'll get past the gate. But, Lurcrecia dear, I haven't slept in two years, literally. Hojo must have altered my genes to do this once someone had woken me up. So if they do come in...trust me, I'll be ready."  
  
He lowered the gun, putting it behind his back, and knelt over her, pinning her waist down with his knees. Her ribs burned in protest. Her eyes had been watering constantly, but it couldn't stop her from seeing him as he leaned in close and smirked mockingly. "Surrender, Lucrecia. You have light; more importantly, you have your life. I needn't tell you just how easy it is for me to take both of those away." He brought up his silver claw and fingered the collar of the labcoat he'd made her wear with a smile worthy of Lucifer. "And more, if I so desire..."  
  
And apparently, he did. But after the top two buttons were undone and his claw was slipping beneath the white fabric, having taken her shirt when he'd locked her down here post the first escape attempt, she gave up, shrieking like a banshee trying opera.  
  
He protested to this, and made it known by withdrawing his hand momentarily, then backhanding her across the cheek he hadn't hit earlier. She silenced herself for the most part, reduced to a low whimper, everything above the waist feeling as if it were going to collapse in on itself.  
  
Vincent stayed there for a moment, then fired the gun -- Lucrecia began screaming again when her foot jerked and she realized what had happened, but the red-clad madman seemed horribly undisturbed. He drew up, allowing her to writhe in pain, then walked to the desk and grabbed the disconnected phone. He then walked to the cabinet and flung it open so hard that it came off its hinges.  
  
He rooted among the syringes for a moment, Lucrecia watching him fearfully, before withdrawing one in particular; filled with green liquid and with two needles, it was undoubtedly the one she'd been informed of. He read the label: "Polioxidine. Advisory: Do not use on humans. May have harmful or deadly side-affects. Use only in small doses unless under professional supervision."  
  
He walked over and leaned over her again, and she became wholly aware that her ribs, face, and foot had just gone terribly low on her list of concerns. "They call this the Anti-Demon. Hojo's the only one who could make it, and this is the last syringe." He cruelly stabbed it into her neck and thrust down, injecting the liquid into her jugular. "Lucky you," he whispered.  
  
Vincent watched uncaringly, as she could see, as Lucrecia's body locked up and went into convulsions, a frothy, red bile-smelling substance propelling from her mouth. 'Sedative my ass,' was her last controlled thought. She threw herself onto her side, slamming her head on the wall and leaving a large gash on her forehead -- it, too, began spewing the red stuff -- before curling into a pained fetal position, skin tightening around her bones and collapsing her veins, before falling still.  
  
He stood there a moment more before throwing the phone violently across the room with the needle and turning to go back to his room.  
  
To watch the crimson moons.  
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Author's Note: Don't place this anywhere other than pre-game and far into the alternate universe. For purely unentertaining purposes. And if you're wondering about all the yelling, I've been reading Bram Stoker lately. If you've read Dracula...yeah, you get it. 


End file.
